"War, Fascism, concentration camps, rubber truncheons, atomic bombs, etc., are what we daily think about, and therefore to a great extent what we write about, even when we do not name them openly. We cannot help this. When you are on a sinking ship, your thoughts will be about sinking ships." --George Orwell (1903-1950)[Thanks to Alex Constantine @ http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/]

Tuesday, May 1

With my humble language skills insufficient to prepare viewers for what the BBC reports in the clip below, let me instead simply excerpt introductory remarks proffered at LiveLeak.com, where it is archived:

"Thank God For Dead Soldiers"The most hated family in America, the Westboro Baptist Church, who hates soldiers and pickets soldiers' funerals. They also hate fags, which, by their definition, is anybody who isnt [sic] one man and one woman [sic?].

Well, hey.... I don't believe I could do any better. Perhaps a French surrealist novelist could.

In any event, I firmly believe viewers, after watching this 9-minute report, are adroitly positioned to answer author Thomas Frank's rhetorical question posed years ago in the title of his book What's the Matter with Kansas?

On the other hand, a pranking Australian interviewer in the next clip has an entirely different approach to the Kansan fundamentalists, particularly to their patriarchal leader who showed up with his followers in another public action in Greensboro, North Carolina.